Mullholland Drive

[OpalCat]

I just watched this for the first time. I didn’t want to bump this thread because it was really old, but I’ll still quote part of it.

IIRC, the “old people” were Diane/Betty’s parents. You see them at the very start of the movie after they drop Diane/Betty off at the airport. In the cab as they head home, they are just beaming with pride and joy that their little girl is going off to become rich and famous.

I think they are people she met on the plane. They are all arriving in LA, they say it was nice “travelling with her” and they go off in a cab… doesn’t make sense if they’re her parents. Plus she calls them by their first names.

Ok now my questions…

The Cowboy? WTF?

The strange homeless guy? WTF?

The guy and his (psychiatrist? friend?) at the restaurant? WTF?

Anyway, I liked the movie but I’m going to have to watch it a few dozen more times before I really “get it”. But then, this is par for the course in David Lynch movies, so I am not really surprised.

[pezpunk]

This is a great analysis of the film. Once I read it the whole thing made much more sense to me, if thats possible.

From the site

What about the monster?

The monster, who hides behind the diner where Diane contracted the killing, seems to be the demon Diane metaphorically begins dealing with when she decides to have her girlfriend knocked off. In the end we see he’s just a homeless man, a reminder of the grimy Hollywood Diane came to know after her jitterbug-queen optimism got beaten out of her. And, OK – he’s also the keeper of the box, the symbol of Camilla’s death and perhaps reality contained (sort of like a movie). Once it’s unlocked, Diane has to return to the physical world and accept that she’s done an inhuman thing.

Readers see a lot more in the box: Several found an amusing – and hard to argue with – sexual connotation. (Maybe that’s why the hitman laughs when Diane asks what the key opens.) Others make a case that it’s a television. The multiplicity of meanings fits in well with the film’s texture.

The cowboy

Fine, fine. Isn’t the cowboy just sort of a twist on the menacing Robert Blake character in “Lost Highway,” the reindeer man in “Wild at Heart” etc., etc.?

It certainly seems like it. The goofy Roy Rogers getup is also another echo of a prelapsarian Hollywood when the studio system ruled and studio heads of virtually limitless power really did pull the strings.

Anyway, hope this helps a bit. If not, just drop some acid and watch it again. It will all become clear.

[OpalCat]

Heh. If it had come out 10 years ago I’d do exactly that